


Movement

by cheveril



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-21
Updated: 2013-04-21
Packaged: 2017-12-09 02:38:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/768990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheveril/pseuds/cheveril
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A step towards him, a step away, and then out the door.</p><p>***</p><p>Harry makes a decision.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Movement

The water beat down, clouding the air, steaming the glass, but he didn’t seem to mind. It slowed to a trickle, he washed himself, it turned back on, he rinsed it off, it slowed, he washed, it pelted down full force again and he stood in it, letting the water tear through the foam covering him, stripping and wiping him in heat and water.

The ledge in front of him, short, squat, tiled in grey granite, gleaming and shifting with the sloshing of water down and off it; the drain in the corner, a small whirlpool forming from the water rushing towards its inescapable pull; the stone walls dark from moisture, mottled and rough, scraping his skin as he leaned and slid down it, slouching against the wall in the water with the posture of the disaffected.

The door knob turned, jammed; he’d locked it this morning when so many mornings before he’d left it unlocked. 

“Just because I wake up after you do doesn’t mean you lock me out of the shower, you bastard. Open up,” sleep roughened, slightly slurred. He could see the image on the other side of the door already: unshaven jaw, worse hair than usual, head turned, back leaning, legs indolently crossed, hand on the door knob. Ready to fall into the shower.

He drew a knee up, stretched his arm across it, reached up and turned the water off. A grunt, movement on the other side of the door. He didn’t have to see, he knew: legs now uncrossed, leaning on his side rather than his back, hand still on the door knob. 

He pushed his hair back from his forehead, pulled up the other knee and now leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees, his chin on his forearms. Water escaped from his hair, down his back, rolling down his thighs toward the crease of his hips and towards the floor.

“Arse, come here and open the door.” The knob jammed again. He exhaled noiselessly and stretched his arms out, standing up. Unfolding slowly like a reluctant mass of levers, pulleys, bearings, casters. Stepping out of the shower, reaching behind him for the towel, wrapping it around his waist, he felt the minutiae of his body’s movements. The pushing, the pulling, the turning, the bending, the pressing, the grasping, the thrusting. The pushing, the pulling, the turning, the bending—he stopped thinking of it, of anything, even as it echoed in his being.

Unlocked. Turned. Pulled. Faced—Cast his eyes down, pushed past the blur of pale and blonde, watched the wooden skirting under the wardrobe, that thin strip of brown with its subtle variations of colour and grain, suddenly more familiar to him than the planes and surfaces of the body he’d just skirted past. 

Another grunt and a movement so incoherent it looked like a tumble out the corner of his eye—but he knew that was how he was in the morning, a jumble of joints so unlike the measured, disciplined posture he usually carried. It was he whose movements were so deliberate on mornings like this, and careless, abstract in the norm. He unwrapped the towel and wiped the back of his neck, still damp from the beads of water dripping down from his hair. Shrugging into his clothes, he dropped the towel carelessly onto the floor, knowing it would annoy him later but not caring.

 

He was sitting on the very edge of the bed when he sauntered out, uncovered and slightly damp. Picking up the towel and throwing him a dirty look, he put it on one of the hooks on the back of the door. 

“You know I don’t like towels on the floor.” He turned and bent over to open a low drawer, snatching random articles of clothing and throwing them on. Twelve hours later he knew he’d still look sleekly combed and the silent, perfect creature on his bed would have a shadow on his jaw and a mess of disheveled black hair. 

He was always like this in the morning; moody enough for two, he’d always thought—but this morning seemed different. The water he’d heard going off and on and off and on, the locked door, the dropped eyes. 

He stuck a foot into one leg of his slacks and then the other, glancing occasionally at those green eyes fixed so intently on the space before him. He wondered where he’d go for his run.

“So what time tonight?” He noted the potential for a Pinteresque pause and played along, hopping slightly as he slipped a sock over one foot.

“Won’t be here tonight.”

“Something on?”

“No.”

“Then?”

The stillness on his bed stood up, unfolding to his full height with the dexterity that came so suddenly to him when he ran, when he fought. 

“I won’t be back.” A step towards him, a step away, and then out the door.

He stared at the slightly gaping door.


End file.
